Just Heather
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Snack: Lunch 2
Aug 19, 2005 | Filed Under: Picky Eater, Quotable Kids

We have a daily ritual—the after-school snack. Dinner is not until 7, and my kids are on full feed, so no way am I stupid enough to expect them to last 7 hours between meals. Lately, the “snack” has taken on a life of its own. Yesterday, she fixed cinnamon toast. Not just one piece as you might expect for a snack, but a plate more full than she would eat for breakfast.

Today, she’s having leftover chicken dumplings. Her choice after I vetoed the chili. The little one isn’t much better. I asked her what she wanted for snack and she said “peanut butter.”

“You want a peanut butter sandwich. For snack. Really?”

“No. I jess want peanut butter.”

My family is so weird.

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Selective Memory
Aug 16, 2005 | Filed Under: Busy Bees, Calendar Girl, Living Montessori, Scout Mom

Remember how excited I was that school was almost starting? Yeah, why didn’t someone remind me of the 50 million things to do, places to be, and meetings to attend. I completely blocked out a rather significant fact about the school year—we have about eleven hundred accompanying activities.

School starts in 2 days. I had my first meeting last night, the one for Girl Scout leaders. It brought everything back in stunning clarity. Free time? Right—the white spaces on my calendar are rapidly disappearing as activity schedules roll in.

  • Kids’ Church Choir—twice a month
  • Brownies—twice a month (being the leader did give me the opportunity to arrange the schedule so these two alternate)
  • Soccer—twice a week
  • PTO Meetings—once a month
  • PTO committees—I begged off this year (maternity leave?)
  • Brownie Leader Meetings—once a month
  • Bible Study—once a week (this one’s for me!)
  • Baby Doctor appointments—every two weeks for now; moves to weekly the last month (that doesn’t even account for the inevitable trips to the pediatrician now that everyone else’s germs will come home with my kid)

That works out to about 5 things each week. How ever did I manage to forget about that? For the foreseeable future my meeting notebook will be permanently grafted to my arm, my chauffer’s cap shall not be removed, and my bottom will be firmly planted in the doctor’s office waiting room. What idiot coined the term stay-at-home mom?

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All Quiet on the Home Front
Aug 11, 2005 | Filed Under: Fashion Disaster, Household CEO, Living Inexpensively, Living Montessori

The girls’ week at Camp Grandma’s is almost over. It should feel weird here, I guess, but I’m so busy doing the things I never have time for that I barely notice the quiet. I’ve gotten our bedroom fairly organized in preparation for the office transition. We have no spare bedrooms so baby is taking over the office. He’ll just have to deal with a corner of our bedroom. Of course, that means I can no longer just shut the door on his noise. It’s bad enough I can feel the bass vibrate my bathtub each night when he plays City of Heroes—now I won’t even have an insulated wall between us.

I also finished most of my baby shopping. The only thing left to buy is a crib mattress—seeing as how the old one is still being used on a toddler bed—and the bedding. After that it’s just clothes and diapers. For the rest of my natural life. Speaking of clothes, I also got most of Stacia’s school clothes bought. I discovered all of her skorts and shorts from the spring were still in great shape. Shirts she ruins with gusto, but the shorts seem to have survived. I took them to a few stores and bought some matching tops. I hate this time of year. She needs new school clothes because she destroyed all of last year’s, but I hate spending a lot of money. Because I’m cheap. And because she’ll just need all new clothes again when it cools.

School starts in one week, so it’s good I’m almost ready. Well, I’ve been ready for weeks, but now I almost have her ready too. Tonight I have to go to the Back to School Night. I promised I would go check the class list and see who she knew, since she couldn’t go herself. When I made the offer, I was thinking I’d just pop in and jot down the names I recognized. It occurred to me this morning that this could take a lot longer than I thought. I’m bound to run into everyone I haven’t seen all summer and spend a few minutes catching up with each of them. Such is life in a small town.

That’s all the time I have for catching up here. I’m sure I’ll be posting with more regularity once we get back to a daily schedule.

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3
14 More Days
Aug 04, 2005 | Filed Under: Calendar Girl, Household CEO, Mommyhood

Oh, how I loathe summertime. I am just not cut out for warm weather. Today I had intended to beat the heat with an afternoon at a local water playground. It was not only so I could wear my new maternity bathing suit and even out those weird tan lines. It was also a bribe to get the girls (I don’t know why I still link to them every time—their blogs have not been updated since 1992!) to do their chores. All I wanted was the crap picked up off the living room floor so I could vacuum. Yes, I occasionally do that.

Instead, they chose to lay on the floor and whine about how it just isn’t fair. Why do I have to do all this? Um, maybe because you’re the ones who made the damn mess in the first place. Then my mom gets after me with her whole Cinderella-complex. I’m thinking it’s really not too much to expect a 7-year-old to clean her own messes. It’s not like I have her cooking my dinner or ironing my clothes. After 4 hours, the living room—which was really not that messy, by the way—doesn’t look much different then it did last night, except for the addition of breakfast crumbs.

I did manage to get them to pick up the eleventy hundred pairs of shoes they had strewn about the first floor on their way up for nap/quiet-time. Of course, that was met with huge sighs and groans about how it was just too hard to carry that many shoes at the same time. Then I mentioned that perhaps they had too many shoes to begin with and I should come visit the shoe rack with my donation box. Extra hands suddenly appeared and all shoes made it to the appropriate locations without any mishaps. It’s a miracle, I tell ya.

I feel sort of bad that I’m the one counting down the days until school starts. I’m sure that makes me a horrible mother in some eyes. I’m just so tired of breaking up fights, tearing down soda-bottle walls between lunch seats (at least they figured out how not to fight for one 20-minute period per day), and listening to whining about how unfair it is that they have to do something other than veg out in front of the television.

2 weeks. I can manage for 2 weeks. Besides, they are going to Camp Grandma’s for 1 of those weeks so I really only have 5 more days of this nonstop, in-your-face, what-can-we-do-now summer schedule.

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Notes from the Road
Aug 01, 2005 | Filed Under: Hoosier Girl, Music Notes, Road Trip
  • The trip to my parents’ house is much longer with a 1-hour stop at Old Navy.
  • I should never be turned loose at Old Navy when they are having massive clearance sales.
  • Indiana’s new interstate speed limit goes a long way towards making up lost time.
  • Traveling during bedtime does not necessarily indicate that my girls will actually sleep in the car—even when naps are skipped to improve this possibility.
  • Skipping naps? So not a good idea. Ever.
  • Someone who loathes remixes should never listen to Club Mix Hour on the radio—unless, of course, the only other options are country music stations.
  • I grew up in the one of the biggest redneck, hicktowns in America. This has nothing to do with my trip, other than I am reminded when I spend more than 5 minutes in my hometown.
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Out of the Box
Jul 20, 2005 | Filed Under: Part-Time Geek, Picky Eater

I’m not much of a cook—wait, that’s not quite accurate. I cook all the time, but I’m not so big on “from scratch” cooking. My motto has always been “If you make it at home, it’s homemade.” My home-baked goodies are courtesy of Pillsbury and Betty Crocker. I do tend to use a lot of fresh meat and veggies in my meals, but I cook nothing elaborate. As a result, it is very easy to get stuck in a rut, cooking the same meals week after week. I’m not an adventurous eater, but I’ve been trying to branch out a bit.

Chelle posted an easy Egg Muffin Sandwich recipe the other day. She, of course, made her English muffins from scratch. When I decided to try it for Spencer—who stops at McD’s for an egg mcmuffin every single time we’re awake early enough—I bought a package instead. I had fully intended to use her recipe—really, I did—but the sale price on the packaged goods called out to me louder than the full price on the yeast I needed for the homemade variety. I think they turned out decent, though I don’t do eggs so I wouldn’t know personally. My big clue is he’s been taking them to work for breakfast every morning and not heading straight for the fridge when he gets home.

As for dinner, I’ve become rather addicted to All Recipes in the last few months. Did you know you could search solely in the “Quick and Easy” category? I picked up on that real fast. You can also search by ingredient if you have something you want to use up before it expires. Last night, I fixed Chicken and Dumplings. I’ve never made them before since dumplings require actual work so when I found this recipe that called for my favorite doughboy I just had to try it. Of course, I didn’t have any of the actual ingredients listed. I’m famous for substitutions (yet another great feature of AllRecipes.com).

Instead, I made a close facsimile with what I had on hand:

  • 4 boneless chicken breasts
  • 2 cans condensed cream of chicken soup
  • salt and pepper (I had this one!)
  • 1 11-oz package of refrigerated breadsticks

The breadsticks took longer to cook than the biscuits would have, but I liked the way it turned out. In fact, I’ll be having the last bowl for lunch. Poor Spencer is stuck with a turkey sandwich for about the gazillionth workday in a row. I’m working on a solution for that one, though with the fresh lettuce from our garden he doesn’t seem to mind too much.

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2
Fruity Family
Jul 19, 2005 | Filed Under: Living Inexpensively, Picky Eater

I buy fresh fruit constantly. My girls love it, as does Spencer when he remembers to actually eat it. Next to diapers, it’s probably my biggest grocery expense. I have my limitations though—I still won’t buy it unless it’s on sale.

We will sometimes have apples and oranges, sometimes bananas and strawberries, but there is always fresh fruit on hand. This week I hit the motherload—apples, peaches, strawberries, grapes, and blueberries were all on sale. I stocked up, thinking I’d be tossing fruit by Saturday. It’s nearly gone and we’re not even halfway through the week. These people are insatiable!

I’m not complaining—well, too much anyway. At least it’s healthy and not bogged down with sugar. Sugar is something my kids just can’t handle. They don completely different personalities and become these monster children I can’t believe I spawned. Fruit is sweet—but not too sweet. It’s good for you—but not so good that it’s really a vegetable. And it’s something the whole family really enjoys.

Now if only they’d let me eat some now and then. That’s what I get for being so picky as to demand clean food—there’s probably an entire bowl of fruit salad littering my kitchen floor.

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2
What Day Is It?
Jul 12, 2005 | Filed Under: Calendar Girl, Quotable Kids

All day yesterday I couldn’t remember if it was Tuesday or Wednesday. Imagine my surprise to wake up this morning and discover it was still Tuesday. The slow moving week has made me realize something, though—school starts in only 37 days! I really think it’s the constant bickering that makes the days drag on. I honestly can’t wait to separate them again. I would never have thought with such an age difference, that they would fight like cats and dogs, but you’ll see I mean that literally from one of yesterday’s “conversations”:

Stacia: (singing) I know you; I walked with you once upon a dream. (repeat. over and over again.)
Brenia: Stop singing that song!
Stacia:: (singing)I know you; I walked with you once upon a dream.
Brenia: Stop it! Hssss!
Stacia: Grrr.

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